Why are resellers still offering the 7970M with the NP9150/P150?

Just as the title says. I'd like to hear from resellers why they are still selling a product known to be defective.

 

Because it's not defective? Driver issues != defective hardware.

 

How do you know? Do you work for AMD? Do you know a muxless design will ever be fixable by a driver update? I've been hoping so, but after 4 months I'm beginning to have my doubts. That's nearly an entire product cycle.

Product = hardware + software. Defective software = defective product.

 

TokamakH3 ,I think you trolling , the question has been posted gazillions times on other threads and its been answered by some resellers . No need to make another useless thread that will actually hinder other people's thread who might need help. Next time just use search engine.

 

I agree with you, it is defective right now since a GPU is nothing without drivers. The product is drivers + hardware, you buy a product based on the driver support. No one would buy any GPU that does not perform as advertised due to poor driver support.

I do believe resellers should be honest with customers and inform them of the issues. If they just tell oh yeah, 7970M is incredible blah blah blah, then that is just wrong.

 

Oh? Perhaps my google-fu isn't up to speed because I haven't seen a decent explanation. Care to link?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/687707-amd-7970m-nvidia-680m-thank-you-sager.html

the thread here is where they start talking about amd 7970m as faulty product. However, sha7bot (notebook reseller) says that its not faulty product due his posted reasons . His posted start from the 2nd page

 

sha7bot also says that it functions as intended. Clearly this is not the case unless it was intended that performance would be strangled when enduro was enabled. The evidence for that is clear.
Yes, it does work, but not as intended. It is reasonable to ask why resellers don't at least inform customers of that.

 

View the bright side of the moon, reseller selling the 7970M means the product is not defective and its drivers will be fixed, reseller are not willing to face law demands, so if they trust this csard enough to sell it means all worries will be adressed soon.,

 

They trust that people that have not researched enough will buy into a defective product. They don't know if this will be fixed. Same as us. They just want people's money, clear and simple.

 

What really blows my mind beyond belief is this....I'm sitting here as an end user with a nVidia 680m installed in my laptop right after having the AMD 7970m. Game after game I launched I experienced better performance...whether it's GPU usage, frame rates, steady framerates etc. There was an instance in BF3 Close Quarters, in the Donya Fortress map, where I see frame rates and GPU usage I have never seen with the AMD 7970m. I always have MSI's Afterburner display GPU temps, GPU usage, core clocks, and memory clocks as well as the in-game fps meter running. I am witnessing frame rate readings and gpu usage readings I haven't seen in the same areas of the map that I did with the AMD 7970m. Plus it runs 8-10+ degrees cooler.

So, for some rep from a reseller, not a system builder like Sager to troll around my thread that king601 mentioned up above and post that the card works fine while AMD recently mentioned that there is supposedly going to be a driver release to address its issues was amusing. Unless I'm experiencing some serious vision issues, the nVidia 680m works better. Period.

It's sort of like a F1 racing team....cars are evenly matched for the most part (due to the rules and regulations) but the driver (pun intended) makes all the difference.

If or when AMD's next driver update actually remedies current 7970m issues, then so be it. I'll be tremendously happy for current AMD 7970m owners. As for me, my notebook works RIGHT NOW.

 

sha7bot as a reseller has a vested interest in portraying the card as non defective. He's been doing his best to divert some blame from AMD to Intel and Clevo, thus defining this enduro issue an unfortunate circumstance of various factors... which in the end means consumer cannot blame anyone really and has to live with a faulty card. also, a lot of his claims cannot be backed up by anything really, so take what he says with a pinch of salt.
to answer OPs question - resellers are still offering 7970m because it sells.

 

7970M defective ? Well I think you're just trolling since you DID NOT see the OFFICIAL AMD statements (sorry for the capital letters but I'm sick with people saying absolutely false facts).

Enduro has driver related issues and starting with october AMD drivers, enduro5.5 will have some major fixes and improvements, not only that, but just like Verde, upcoming drivers will ALL be enduro compatible and will offer recurring support and fixes for enduro. They changed the way the amd dGPU transmit information to the screen, they changed the intel iGPU and AMD dGPU relation (they will be "more indepedant" we will be able to freely update the intel Igpu driver), and I think they even underlined the fact that later we will be able to combine the HD4000+AMD dgpu processing power (and that's something).

To all 680M users, spending 300 additional dollars just for short term better performance is not a solution, it just shows that you're impatient and ready to throw your hard-earned money away, It runs 8-10° cooler ? who cares my 7970 (aluminium duct tape and IC7) runs between 64-79° C with all game I play: BF3 armored kill, LoL, witcher 2 etc,...what is the point if the 680m is cooler ? both run fine (and I still have 300 additional $)

And even with 12.8 beta, Ghost recon, BF3, witcher 2, diablo 3, guild wars 2 already run like a charm even without the new drivers. Let's re-launch the nvidia/amd debate with the enduro 5.5 drivers

 

There is no debate. If you have extra money and want to spend it, then 680M is your choice. If you have better places to use your money, go with the 7970M. The 680M is the better card, even though its not nearly 300€ better. + there is the peace of mind that it works now.

 

The nvidia costs US300 to 400 more, so there is no reason to even compare these cards (only the 7970M performing the same or better than the 680M is interesting news). People are losing perspective, thats all.
Period.

As in all things in life, some resellers (few i guess) will have that stance, people are just not that bad to recommend a faulty product to their own hard earned customers. Besides even if they act with the cold money in mind, they dont loose nothing and win lots by placing a warning about the 7970M enduro issues. On the other hand when enduro gets fixed and 7970M turns out to be a bang for the bucks they would be blamed by their customers if they didnt offer the card to them.
I myself asked many resellers about these issue before it was as big as now (but still it was already in the forums) before buying my laptop, and all of them told me there was a driver issue but that it will be fixed in the future and that the card was a very good one anyway. So mainly i had all the data to make a decision, you are free to buy what you like.

 

I did make that decision myself, and have regretted it since. I bought a p150em back in June, knowing full well about the Enduro issues. Like you, I had a huge amount of optimism that the problem would be fixed in a timely manner. How very wrong I was. As time has gone on since my purchase, I have been losing faith in everybody that's involved in this mess. AMD blame Clevo/Sager and they blame AMD. The resellers are being extremely quiet about the whole thing which is quite disheartening. It's all well and good to be optimistic in your own world, but most people here are fed up with all parties' lack of customer care. Just wait until you receive yours and have to wait another 3+ months for drivers that fix it.

 

I bought my P170EM in early July, and got disheartened by the silence our complaints were met with. But all I wanted was for AMD to acknowledge the issues and confirm to us that they are working on an issue. Never expected a quick fix, but I wanted to know one was coming.

The announcement took way too long for AMD to make, but now that it is done, it would cause quite a sh*t storm if they left the problem unsolved. For example, Anandtech would rip them to new ones. Therefore, I have allowed myself to get my hopes up again.

Besides, they are likely to use Enduro for their next series of cards, so they kinda have to fix it (if possible).

 

AMD blame Clevo/Sager and they blame AMD.
Again, AMD did imply that there was a problem with drivers, and that there will be a new enduro driver late october.

 

I will have mine tomorrow! cant wait...
I think you should still back up your original decision, the only thing you did bad was calculations, 3 months aint a whole lot for a mayor driver fix, and as said in other posts I believe AMD has been working on this for only a month or two.
Even so my expectations are not that the fix will come right now, in one or two months, i would certainly not complain if it does, but as Montage said, hearing they are on to it its enough for me, and my calculations are end of year 2012 at best.

regards
Voz

 

I am getting tired of reading bash after bash.. how about this, DROP IT! Lets wait until the new drivers come out.
As for people claiming the 680m to be FASTER, BETTER, bla bla bla... game play benches show the cards almost neck and neck. ^680m is slightly (<10fps) faster is most games, sometimes slower..
GTX 680m vs HD 7970m - YouTube
AMD HD 7970m vs Nvidia GTX 680m - YouTube
Test GeForce GTX 680M vs. Radeon HD 7970M - Notebookcheck.com Tests

 

actually, OC'ed 680m creams OC'ed 7970m in everything, and 99% who buy these cards will overclock them.

 

Funny story.

People OC all GPU's now a days. Even a funnier story, people tend to overlook their temps, funny story then we have weird threads...

 

Agreed, the 680M is severely overpriced, there's no question about it and there's no way to sugarcoat it. But since you seem to like links so much, here are a few more for you:

Crysis 2 7970m , 3610qm - YouTube (around minute 0:52)
and
AMD 7970m BF3 Multiplayer gameplay test - YouTube (around minute 0:20)
There are many others like those.

Lucky for you, you'll be having the P370EM according to your signature, so a 7970M is indeed (crossing fingers for all you P370M guys) the right choice for you, but all the P1XEM guys should definitely stick to the 680M until further notice.

 

Don't think the amount of ppl oc'ing their cards is anywhere near 99%. I don't feel comfortable oc'ing a laptop gpu. Haven't even oc'd my 580 gtx on my desktop.

 

Actually have not seen that. I only see benchmarks of 3Dmark 11. The FPS I see in games, doen't seem much higher, if higher than the 7970M. Who cares about DX11 benchmark...

 

Well I just received my Mythlogic Nyx1712 on Thursday, with a 7970m, and could not be happier. See I AM ONE of those who did research their purchase for months before buying, and I knew that Enduro issues would not, I say again NOT affect me in the current state of things. Every game and piece of software I run, is unaffected.

For the trolling OPs benefit, since this seems to elude him, if the actual hardware was the issue it would be a very serious issue affecting virtually every game or software application, but it is not. So it is a driver vs developer issue, meaning that between AMDs driver and the choices made by some developers with their engines there is a problem. I knew it would get fixed, I also knew it would take some time, I also knew AMD is about as good at communication about isuses as either Intel or Nvidia and we would be in dark for a while. Just the way it is.

So I am happy I was able to buy a 7970m, its what I needed and wanted, and works for me perfectly. But I relish a final fix, as there is no telling when I could be affected in future, and that is the real question, or was, would a fix come before I became one of those suffering through the Enduro issue.

Looks like no.

So I put my $300 towards a 512GB SSD, a far bigger performance gain then a 680m would give me vs a conventional HD.

However I am not saying the 680m is a bad purchase, I believe for me it would have been, but everyone is welcome to make that judgement for themselves. What ever they decide, what ever they are happy with, like me, is the right choice.

 

Well... If it is like that, I want my money back on all Desktop graphic cards I have bought until now...

Drivers used to come out, and there was sometimes crazy performance upgrade of even more than 50% on some games...

So before having that driver, I would also stay pissed with them and ask money back?

Well I bought like 5 GPU's already, and had 2 nvidias, they were all the same, and like 2 years later performanced increased like 80% on some crazy games...


Would I call nvidia\Ati and say I want my money back? Well... It's just the way it is.

And if you wanna pay the extra like 300$ for the GTX680, is up to you, and if you think it will also work at full 100% performance on every software, well..... I bet all the money in the world that it will not .

ps: If you want the GPU to work well on 100% of the software, don't buy any GPU, because none will work for you, and I don't think they will work that good so soon (maybe 10 years from now u could finally buy a computer )...
Keep Cool

 

There's a difference between having a working game and then improve upon it later on than to have a game that is almost unplayable and wait for a fix.</snip>

 

ROFL at guily6669, this isn't about drivers not being optimized, this is about Enduro borking the GPU.

 

Actually you can compare the two because they are current flagship mobile GPU's of the same generation.

 

This. And they perform around the same (when there is no enduro) so why shouldn't people compare them?

 

Few months from now both cards are beaten by something new anyways. Your 3610QM CPU is slayed by Haswell 6 months from now. Both cards process and display polygons just fine. Buy whatever you want. World moves on :SLEEP:

 

I don't do benchmarks or heavy duty, nor do I have any particular use for the enhanced iGPU. Therefore I think my CPU will hold its ground just fine . There hasn't really been great advances in CPUs since Sandy, and I doubt Haswell will bring anything revolutionary with it.

The GPU will meet its demise sooner though.

 

Well... even still. On desktop I had blue screens because of GPU on every card I bought...

Also Drivers crashing for example I had in all cards too either ATI and Nvidia... I had tons of problems with everything, and also had games that wouldn't play on one GPU because of incompatibility.

Gladly with time it got improved :thumbsup:.

I know so many people with the clevo 150 and 7970M and well the biggest problem reported is just GPU temp, they have been playing good

Well... Those series are very recent. If I was to tell you how much technology had as big problems as this, it would be a full book of it...

If you already knew, well wait for a fix from ATI. Either that, or you should have spent 300€ more and bought the GTX680 which is lot better since it uses less power...


And again... I had similiar HUGE problems with ATI and Nvidia on the Desktop graphic cards versions I bought. Some were disturbing, but oh well, after a year or so they finally fixed them . But there was always one or two games that were completely unplayable until they fixed it with a new driver release (some took more than one version and months, but oh well...)!
Keep Cool

 

Read about tick-tock.

tick = Die shrink mostly
tock = New architecture and great CPU improvements

Sandy Bridge = tock
Ivy Bridge = tick
Haswell = tock

It`s looking promising. Gonna be interesting to see

 

Because in the world of computers, especially laptops people have settled for if it runs at all its not broke. There are tons of performance damning bugs in various hardware and software that people readily slurp up and few bother to return it. So the point is, it runs games, maybe not as good as it should but mostly it runs them. This is kinda like saying everyone knows Clevos stock keyboard is defective because it has severe key rollover issues why are they still selling them? Becuase it is, what it is.

 

You're really late to the party to be so critical of everyone here. We've been trying to get AMD's attention and looking for a fix for months. I bought this machine 3 months ago before the issue was even explored in depth. So don't tell me I should have spent more, the 680M wasn't even available at that time.

As for energy consumption, no, they are the same. Both shut down when I'm on battery, for AMD it's called zero core technology for a reason. It's less than .5 watt at idle.

I also find your patronizing attitude absurd, as if you are the only one who has owned new technology for so long. Are we supposed to think you are some old sage? Please, this forum is full of people who have been technology junkies for the last 20-30 years. Heck first computer I had was a DIGITAL running a modem with CompuServe, before modem's were even common in households, before AOL, and I'm sure many of NBR like me.

 

Well atending to reviews they claim a lot more battery time under GTX680...

GTX 680M
Battery runtime: Load (maximum brightness) 1h 40min
HD 7970M
Battery runtime Load (maximum brightness) 0h 56min

GTX 680M

Current consumption
Off / Standby 0.3 / 1.8 Watt
Idle 16.2 / 22.4 / 26.9 Watt
Load 106.5 / 183.0 Watt

Key: min: , med: , max: Voltcraft VC 940
HD 7970M

Current consumption
Off / Standby 0.2 / 1.8 Watt
Idle 16.4 / 22.1 / 26.9 Watt
Load 118.8 / 199.7 Watt

Key: min: , med: , max: Voltcraft VC 940

Price:
"Nvidia are asking for much more money for the GTX 680M than are AMD for the HD 7970M. An almost 300 Euro ($380 USD) surcharge (see configurator) can be pretty pretty steep and seems excessive given that the Radeon GPU can perform equally as fast in most games"...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also this things take time... AGAIN, some problems I had on even desktop cards which are their main market, have only been fixed like a year later.

If the GPU was really faulty and didn't worked as a GPU, I bet ATI would have to resend a brand new revised version for everyone with those defective GPU's.

If they are not defective... Well all u can do is wait for either a Driver FIX, or a BIOS to fix it.


But I was talking more for the topic it self saying that they shouldn't sell this card, because it doesn't work...
Keep Cool

 

Wrong again. 680M and 7970M equipped notebooks for Clevo get over 4 hours battery.

 

Read up... it's from the official comparison between both...

They perform almost the same, but not under heavy load.

4 hours is doing nothing at all. Go play a game on maximum with full brightness, or a stress test with both, only then u will see the difference, since in idle both have the same consumption. But when u start really using the GPU is when the huge differences come into play.

I haven't made those results, they are on notebook reviews...


They even talk about those ATI problems that some games work pretty bad because of what we'r discussing here... But it doesn't work so bad in everything and then there's this: " GTX 680M is even significantly slower in professional applications."


They recommend GTX680 even though it's lot more expensive for people who want the best balance possible, taking that out they recommend the HD7970M even though it's abysmal Enduro problems. (It's not like the topic.... "why are they still selling it", well... Because it probably still works as a GPU).

ps: I haven't made anything up, it's all on the comparison from both GPU at notebookcheck...
Keep Cool

 

Seems like there are folks who either don't even have their laptop yet, or didn't experience using both cards. Especially those who don't have it yet, it's is almost like you are trying to justify your purchase.

Those links to benchmarks don't hold much weight for especially for BF3 multiplayer, which I play the most. If you join a 32 player multiplayer server or less, you will see the 7970m's GPU usage and frame rates go up. Better yet, try 16, then 32, then 64. So when I saw those notebookcheck benchmark results, that would have been benched in single player where you do see increased GPU usage and frame rates with the 7970m which has been mentioned many times in other threads. But I want to emphasize, in a full 64 player multiplayer game, it's a whole lot different. I've said this before in other threads, the busier and more intense it gets, GPU usage starts to drop. I've been playing a lot of Close Quarters, with on screen monitoring and the in game FPS meter turned on. I've seen my frame rate meter turn red when it reads <30fps. The Scrapmetal map, in a full 64 player server comes to mind. I don't see that with 680m. For those of you who have the expansion, try it....full 64 player server, max settings...at native res. Play around with deferred AA too and note your findings.

 

Well they talked about that problem and related to it as ATI Enduro Abysmal failure problem... But they however said how young it is too... It's not the first time a new technology fails.

it will probably only come later one like a year or so. I know it's bad, but if the GPU's would be defective, people would join up together and demand for a new GPU since this one would be defective. Well they all said they will probably fix this either with BIOS update of the GPU or drivers...

ps: I know how much time those things take to update, because I had lot similar problems back in time and they only fix it like a year later . But I would still buy the HD7970, because I'm not willing to pay extra 300€ for the GTX680. And at least I know Enduro problem won't be fixed so soon, if u didn't know that, now u know! Like they said, if u want balance, pay the extra 300€ for now to a GTX680 instead...
Keep Cool

 

"Seems like there are folks who either don't even have their laptop yet, or didn't experience using both cards. Especially those who don't have it yet, it's is almost like you are trying to justify your purchase."

I dont have my computer yet, no. I can read, use logic, and can come to conclusions based on facts brought forth by independent testers.
I personally was a few days from ordering a 9170EM with the 7970m, regardless of its driver issues. But I caught word of the 370EM... but I still am interested in this topic, I am not a fanboy of any particular brand (I like both), and I dont need to justify my purchase any more than I did before I spent my money. I do feel bad for those who bought the card not knowing the issue, and not knowing when it was going to be fixed.

It WILL be fixed.
"AMD official information, FINALLY! by Vozier on Thursday, September 13, 2012
FINALLY the official news we all waited for

Originally Posted by Marc@AMD
I want to thank all those users that have been patient in this matter, and peristent in providing helpful information and feedback to the community.

We have received some positive news from the Driver Development Team. A driver is planned to be released in the near future that will provide significant improvements to notebooks enabled withAMD Enduro™ Technology.

Please stay tuned to our support.amd.com site for the driver posting.

Source: AMD Game Forums - The Clevo 7970M Enduro/under-utilization debacle"
AnandTech - AMD

So why another thread, bashing just to bash? As for the original question, why would resellers not sell this product? There has never been proof that the issue couldn't or wouldn't be resolved. And it has never been defective.

 

We have been getting spoon fed this sort of information from AMD for months now. You can understand people that have had the 7970m for an extended period of time ought to be a bit skeptical. AMD have told the community time and time again that they are 'working on it'. But the fact that we are yet to see anything that confirms this and that they took down a thread on this forum specifically set up to document the issue definitely makes me skeptical about their efforts.

They have been sneaky and underhand about it instead of coming out and saying that there is a problem with Enduro. Really poor customer care leads to consumers losing faith in their company. Even if they are working on this particular problem and not just giving Enduro a facelift, I will continue to be skeptical until I see some hard evidence. BS forum announcements don't cut for me anymore seeing as nothing has come to fruition so far.

 

I'll gladly eat my own hat about this (can I salt it first?) but something tells me we won't see a HUGE improvement with Haswell. There are great features planned for it and it'll be more efficient, sure, but I really doubt it'll be something like the difference between Fermi and Kepler. Perhaps on the next Intel 'tick' along 2013-2014 we'll see the big jumps.

If only Intel would have a serious competition in the CPU department..

 

actually there has been very little proof that the issue could or would be resolved as for 5 months AMD has dodged every bug report and gave the vaguest of answers via unofficial channels. Just a month ago AMD's support replied that they were aware of the issue but they feel its Clevo's problem and we should talk to them.
Now we've received some acknowledgement but I would honestly hold your horses before you celebrate. "significant improvements" could mean a whole lot of different things in P R-speak, so wait for the driver first before starting raving about how great 7970m is...

and re: 680m vs 7970m, - even with the price difference I would gladly have paid it for a working product and stable drivers. people can argue value of each card, but $300 is a lot cheaper than the headache that 7970m has been for last 6 months.

EDIT: so strange if I type P R (without bolding) it comes up as "Google Page Ranking."

 

That is not true. The only "official" statement from AMD before this latest one, was when they said they were "looking into the issue". They never said they were working on anything, nor did they officially admit an issue, before Marc's latest comment.

 

Ok... don't argue semantics with me. We have the same point of view here. And that is that AMD have failed time and time again to come out with any concrete information that this particular problem will be fixed.

 

Well, I guess you guys are not much into computers for a long time...

Those things don't take months to fix... they take years. At least all huge problems I had with computers, sadly are only fixed a year or 2 later... What can I say...

ps: You should know that. Again if u knew this Enduro problem were there, why didn't u buy the GTX680 instead? (unless you don't read before what you buy and didn't know the problem). Oh and next time similar problems, don't buy it expecting it will be fixed in like 3 months, or 5... more like a year (I know it's pretty bad, but this is how almost every huge problems are fixed in computers. This is really FAR AWAY from the first time it happens).
Keep Cool

 

You could have backed up your claims with links/data. I don't think this is something that would take AMD a year to fix. More like a few months of active coding/testing. Smaller problems may take longer to fix, but this is something that has a potential to influence their sales (probably already has to small extent). It will be fixed in the coming months, if it can be fixed.